Social media management tools have become irreplaceable and needed for every social media manager or digital marketer, they not only help you do your work faster and facilitate all your tasks, but they only great when it comes to inspiration and productivity.
But with so many good social media management tool options out there an important question arises; which one should I choose? The answer is it depends on your needs and what you’re looking for, but if you find yourself overwhelmed with the plethora of social media management tools that are available, in this article we compiled some of the popular ones and summarized their pros and cons to make your decision easier!
Hootsuite
This is one of if not the most popular social media management tools at the moment, and it allows you to manage several platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, and others.
Pros:
- Multi-Columned Streams: this feature enables you to dedicate a tab for each social media account in which the user can set up multiple streams. These streams allow you to monitor all types of notifications and insights; from comments, retweets and mentions for Twitter, private messages, etc.
- Collaboration: with Hootsuite you can assign tasks for other team members and give them the ok to schedule posts, this feature is a great boost for collaboration and teamwork.
- Scheduling: This is shared with most of the other tools, but Hootsuite tells you what time is best to post in order to guarantee best results and engagement.
Cons:
- Expensive: If you want to have access to all of Hootsuite’s features, you will have to pay a hefty amount of money. Especially their analytics reports can be quite pricey and con cost even up to $50.
- No Extension: Opposite to other social media management tools, Hootsuite doesn’t offer the option for a browser extension which is a good feature especially for easy bookmarking sharing.
Buffer
This is another classic and trusty social media management tool which offers an easy and pleasant user experience when it comes to queuing articles for sharing across various platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
Pros:
- Easy to use: Buffer’s interface makes for a pretty easy and simple usage, which makes it very user-friendly and a good place to start if you don’t have experience with social media management tools or just looking for a simple and straightforward one.
- Segmented scheduling: Buffer allows you to schedule times to repeat throughout the week and edit them to your liking for different days.
- Web extension: Buffer Button is a browser extension which makes using this tool on your browser, twitter, or any other pages easy.
Cons:
- Too simple analytics: The analytics feature offered by Buffer is way too simple and only gives you the bare minimum. If you are a business owner and looking for a tool to track your metrics as well as those of your competitors then this is not the one for you.
- Not an all-rounder: Buffer is good for simple tasks and scheduling as mentioned before, but if you are looking for an all-encompassing social media management tool that has everything in one platform you should look somewhere else.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is well known for its beautiful design and great customer support. This social media management tool offers a home dashboard through which you can manage your multiple accounts as well as monitor, schedule, publish, and report all in one platform.
Pros:
- Beautiful layout: Sprout Social is by far the most visually appealing social media management tool, thanks to its crisp, clean, and minimalistic design. You are guaranteed an aesthetically pleasant experience, and this could be more important than you might think especially if you are spending hours each day on a single website, so might as well make it worthwhile.
- Customer and Tech Support: This is one of Sprout Social’s main selling points since their support is well known as being very friendly and diligent and you can rest assured that they will fix any issue you may encounter.
- Straight to the Point: It might not be as fancy as other tools, but Sprout Social is pretty uncomplicated and straight to the point. The interface is very natural which makes for a smooth sailing.
Cons:
- Lacking Scheduling: Unfortunately, the scheduling feature in Sprout Social is not as advanced as in other websites like for example Buffer. You don’t have the option for repeated scheduling which can make you lose a lot of time on doing it manually.
- No Google+: Even though some speculations are hinting for this to change in the near future, at the moment Sprout Social does not have a Google+ integration which can be a pretty significant issue for some people.
- No Facebook Linking: Even though you have the ability to reply and comment on your Facebook posts through Sprout Social, the platform does not allow you to like content. This can be merely a bug or a mishap from their part but it can be very inconvenient at times.
This was our analysis of the Big Three of social media management tools, as we have mentioned in the intro there’s no best or worse, each platform has its own qualities and drawbacks and at the end of the day your personal favorite is going to depend on the type of your work and your needs.
However, even after reading this article you are still indecisive on which social media management tool to go for, the best answer is to try all of them for free. Fortunately, they all offer a free trial as well as free plan for Hootsuite and Buffer. While the free version is not as complete as the paid one and you might be missing out on some premium features like reporting and social media analytics, it is still a good way of testing the waters in order to decide on which plan to buy and invest in.
Hopefully this social media management tools guide was helpful and gave you an insight of what these tools can offer and provide for your business.